If the mysterious disappearance of research vessels at sea was shocking, then this news is enough to shake the entire scientific community.
Evans Lester is widely recognized as one of the world's greatest scientists, having won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice and the Fields Medal once. If he hadn't later voluntarily declared that he would no longer accept any awards, the Nobel Committee might have been debating endlessly about whether one person should receive three Nobel Prizes.
Many of his discoveries injected new energy into the theoretical science community, which had been dormant since the second half of the 20th century, revitalizing it. It is widely believed that unified field theory would be perfected in Lester's hands, and that the giant of science would take the most important and solid step since relativity and quantum theory.
Although Professor Lester is nearly eighty years old, he is in good health and enjoys the highest level of medical care and security in the world. If he were to fall ill, the scientists present would be the first to know, and they would be even more anxious than if they themselves were sick.
Mei Yiqiu was no less shocked than anyone else present. He was an old friend of _Book_ and Lester, having had the privilege of working with Lester when he taught at Princeton University and being deeply influenced by him.
At that time, Mei Yiqiu was still very young. As a Chinese-American genius, he often compared himself with Westerners and was proud of himself for never losing to them. But after meeting Lester, his arrogance was shattered, dissipated, and vanished from his bones. Looking at the entire scientific community, it is impossible to find someone more comprehensive and omniscient Lester.
"What exactly happened? How did he die?" someone asked.
Frederick said, "According to news from Hopkins Medical Center, Mr. Lester passed away last night at his home due to acute encephalitis."
"I don't believe it!" Mei Yiqiu jumped up from her seat in a fit of rage. "No type of acute encephalitis can cause brain death in such a short time. If the encephalitis virus was contracted long ago, why wasn't the patient taken to the hospital sooner? Why didn't we know?"
"Yes, Mr. Lester doesn't belong to any one country, he belongs to the whole world! What right do they have to hide his health condition?" someone echoed.
"Please calm down." Frederick held out his hand and pressed it towards the crowd. " Hopkins Hospital has scientists we can respect, and we should trust their diagnoses."
Mei Yiqiu sat down.
He knew Frederick was right; the death of someone of Lester's stature was enough to cause an earthquake in the scientific community, and no one dared to hide anything unless Lester himself didn't want to tell the world.
"Is there any connection between these two things?" Mei Yiqiu it was a bit strange that Frederick was announcing both things at the same time.
"I hope there's no connection between them, but I can't just assume. In fact, I don't know," Frederick said.
"What do you mean? As far as I know, Mr. Lester was not involved in the expedition to the underwater pyramids," said Professor Hans from the University of Copenhagen.
Frederick nodded. "Indeed, he wasn't directly involved in the expedition, nor had he ever been to the Tubuai Islands, but that doesn't mean he wasn't concerned about the progress. In fact, he specifically mentioned it in his will."
"Did he leave any last words?" many people asked at once.
"Yes," Frederick said. "His last words were written in the Thought Matrix Cipher and given to his trusted friend, Dr. Dardova, before he died. Through Dr. Dardova, these words ended up with us, before even his family had a chance to see them."
Mei Yiqiu to know the Thought Matrix Cipher.
This is a complex brainwave code that does not rely on the memory of symbols or words, but rather identifies the thoughts at that time based on the signals emitted by brainwaves under the pure consciousness during self-hypnosis.
Deciphering this signal is extremely difficult. It requires studying the codewriter's thought patterns throughout his life and finding his mental coordinates within the matrix in order to interpret the radio wave information.
Mei Yiqiu that when he was at Princeton, Lester mentioned that his initial intention in inventing this code was to try to prove that consciousness interferes with quantum mechanics, while quantum mechanics has no effect on consciousness itself.
The experiment apparently failed, but this matrix cipher was proven to be feasible and became one of the most difficult codes to break in the world.
This type of code has two characteristics. First, if you don't know the thought process of the person who wrote the code, even if you know their life story inside and out, you still can't get their mental coordinates. Without mental coordinates, finding information from the matrix is like trying to find a floating sesame seed in the Pacific Ocean without coordinates—it's almost impossible.
The second characteristic is that it can only be completed subconsciously under a state of self-hypnosis, and cannot be forced or faked. Therefore, the Thought Matrix Cipher is also known as the " Lester Signature ".
Of course, since the conversion of consciousness and thought into language is inevitably vague and inaccurate, its signature authentication function is more significant than that of encryption.
"What did he say in his last words?" Mei Yiqiu asked.
"Mr. Lester said that another consciousness invaded and attacked his brain." Frederick said this with a strange expression.
"What does this mean?" Even though everyone present was a scientist, they found such a statement difficult to understand.
Frederick said, "According to Mr. Lester, he fought this intruder for a long time. He suspects that the intruder is extraterrestrial life, what we commonly call aliens."
"Alien?"
"Yes, aliens." Professor Frank, the convener of this meeting and president of the International Quantum Applications Association, who was sitting next to Frederick, took the microphone from Frederick.
"In our novels and movies, aliens always have bodies similar to Earth creatures, either human-like or insect-like, with facial features, a digestive tract, and the need to eat and excrete. At most, they might look a bit disgusting, like having long tentacles and highly corrosive acidic saliva."
"But we are scientists, and we shouldn't limit ourselves to our understanding and mere imagination of carbon-based life. Why must life have to look like us? Why can't it be a rock or a nebula? We shouldn't even confine ourselves to the hypothetical existence of silicon-based life; that's far too narrow-minded!"
Professor Frank paused slightly after speaking all this in one breath, looking out the window of the conference center as if he were looking at a galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years away.
Why must life be material? Besides matter, there are vast and unknown entities in the universe. In those seemingly empty places, there may be life forms that we cannot understand, just as we still cannot understand what we ourselves—our consciousness—are made of.
"Mr. Lester possesses a superhuman mind that none of us can match; he has given us new hope for theoretical physics. I believe that even in his final moments, he will not utter nonsense."
Professor Frank withdrew his gaze and looked at the scientists present.
Whispers filled the room again.
The idea that independent consciousness exists widely in different dimensions of the universe has long been proposed as a scientific hypothesis. However, this hypothesis is meaningless from both an experimental and mathematical/logical perspective, so scientists rarely discuss it, and few conduct genuine research on it.
But it's a different story when it comes from the mouth of a leading figure in academia.
"So what does this have to do with our meeting and those missing islands in the Pacific Ocean?"
Frank glanced at the questioner, nodded slightly, and said, "Mr. Lester believes that somewhere on Earth, there is a wormhole leading to an unknown place in the universe."